


Woven

by nothingwithoutyouxo



Category: Misfits (TV 2009)
Genre: Fluff and Crack, Gen, a hint of pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2020-11-03 20:44:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20547140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nothingwithoutyouxo/pseuds/nothingwithoutyouxo
Summary: Simon shows up to the community center wearing a friendship bracelet. Chaos ensues.





	Woven

**Author's Note:**

> I guess I write Misfits fics now? I've been rewatching this show recently and it's led me here. Their voices might come and a go a little but I'm not from the UK, and this is the first time I've written them so yeah.
> 
> Inspired by [this text post.](https://incorrct-misfits.tumblr.com/post/184215539354/simon-hey-nathan-i-made-us-friendship) Alternatively titled 'Everyone Loves Simon (As They Should)'

It was unusually hot for Wertham, which seemed to be the top complaint that Nathan had as the four of them joined him in the community center for the day, in between the vending machine refusing to work and having run out of cigarettes. They were all feeling it too as they pulled on their orange jumpsuits and tried not to think about what their life had come to. It started when Simon spent about 10 minutes making sure his sleeves were perfectly rolled up. 

“What is _ that _?” Nathan asked, crossing the room towards Simon. 

Simon paused what he was doing to look up at him, trying to figure out what he was asking. “My arm.”

“Right, because I’ve never seen them before. I didn’t even know you had them,” Nathan stared down at him. “I’m not talking about your arm, Barry.” 

Simon didn’t say anything, just avoided his eyes.

He moved, trying to grab Simon’s arm so he could get a better look, but Simon flinched away from the contact.

“He means your bracelet, yeah,” Kelly interjected, trying to help. She knew that once Nathan started, he wouldn’t stop until he got what he was after.

“Yeah. Who made that for ya? You have friends you don’t tell us about? That’s not very fair. You spend every day with us and you don’t even talk to us -”

“My sister made it,” he cut in, going very still. 

Nathan blinked. “You have a sister?”

“Yes.” It was a small detail, not something he often shared with them all. 

“Can I see it?” Alisha asked, shoving Nathan out of the way, and ignoring whatever insult he tried to throw at her.

Simon nodded, and offered her his arm. 

Alisha wrapped her sleeve around her hand to avoid the skin to skin contact, not wanting to trigger her power. “This is cute,” she muttered. “It reminds me of like, the bracelets I used to make in, like, primary school. Did you ever make those, Kelly?”

“Well, if you’re all going to be girls in here, I’m leaving,” Nathan announced, hands on his hips as he tried to draw attention to himself again. 

Kelly decked him across the back of the head quickly in response as she made her way towards them. “Shut up.”

He huffed and dramatically stormed out of the room. Simon’s eyes followed the movement absently. 

“Ignore ‘im,” Kelly shrugged, stopping next to Alisha. She nodded at the bracelet. “Yeah, I remember ‘em.”

“Can you let go of me now?” Simon asked, voice quiet enough that if they weren’t next to him, they wouldn’t be able to hear it.

“Right. Sorry,” Alisha smiled, dropping his arm again and pulling her sleeves up. “Just brings back memories, I guess.”

Simon smiled at her faintly. There seemed to be a sadness to her that he didn’t understand. 

“Come on, dipshits. Sally’s here,” Nathan called, poking his head into the locker room again.

***

“Why all the colours?” Alisha asked, as the five of them tried their best to rub off the fresh graffiti plastered to the side of the community center. She was starting to think that people did this or purpose. Or that Nathan was behind it somehow. At least they weren’t picking up rubbish today.

“It’s because he’s gay!” Nathan called, and Kelly threw the rag she was using at his head. “Hey!”

“Leave Simon alone!”

Simon flinched as the two of them started arguing back and forth.

Alisha sighed next to him. “I just shouldn’t have asked,” she said, more to herself than to him.

“My sister’s whole room is rainbow,” he muttered. “It’s her favourite right now.”

She smiled at that, a hint of nostalgia hitting her. “So she’s over that ‘I hate pink’ phase then?”

He nodded. “She wants everything bright. She likes it that way.”

“How old is she?”

“She’s 12.”

“That’s a good age,” she smiled.

“What are you two whispering about? Share with the group!” Nathan called. 

Alisha almost laughed at the way Simon tensed up. “We’re talking about you,” she said, dropping her rag into the bucket at their feet and crossing her arms over her chest.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She didn’t elaborate and counted the seconds that it took him to interject again. 

“Well, what about me?”

Simon smiled faintly, eyes staying trained on the graffiti they were trying to clean.

“Not telling!”

One. Two. Three.

“That’s not fair!”

***

Two days later, the five of them were on the rooftop of the community center, wasting time before they had to go back down to whatever Sally had planned for them. Nathan was sprawled out in one of the chairs, telling an outrageous and possibly fake story that had Curtis clinging onto every word. Alisha and Kelly were sitting on the edge of the roof, a lit cigarette hanging between Alisha’s fingers. Simon was torn between the two groups, unsure where to go. He still didn’t quite fit with either, as much as he wanted to. He dug his hand into his pocket and then slowly made his way over to the two girls. He sat down on the ground next to them, trying to offer them a smile. They smiled back. 

“Hey, Simon,” Alisha said, offering the cigarette in her hand to Kelly, who grabbed onto it and took a hit. 

Simon’s hand twisted in his pocket. This could have been weird, incredibly weird, and if it was they were probably going to tell him so. He wasn’t sure if he could take the judgement of that. He cleared his throat.

“You alright?” Kelly asked.

He nodded, hesitating. “Can I give you something?” he asked.

She just raised an eyebrow in response.

Alisha shrugged. “Sure.”

Simon took a deep breath and pulled two bracelets out of his pocket, one for each of them. They seemed to have taken to his. There was a connection there that he could sense, and even if he didn’t fully understand it he knew that it meant something. So he’d gotten his sister to help him make a few more of the bracelets, friendship bracelets she called them. Mostly she just seemed to like it when he took an interest in what she liked to do. She just liked spending time with him. He looked up at the girls, fearing rejection but seeing shock instead.

“These for uz?” Kelly asked, the first of them to recover. 

He nodded. He handed Kelly the blue and green one, and held out the pink and red one to Alisha. Both bracelets had orange woven into them as well, to symbolise the little group that they’d managed to create. 

Alisha took hers and immediately tied it to her wrist. She looked down at it, smiling. “The orange’s for you, right?” she asked.

“Sort of,” he muttered. 

“I love it.”

“Did you make ‘em?” Kelly asked, handing Alisha back the cigarette so she could tie hers to her wrist as well.

Simon nodded again. “I had help.”

“What’s going on over here?” Curtis asked, dropping to the floor to join them.

“Where’d Nathan go?” Kelly asked.

He shrugged. “Vending machine or something.” Then he seemed to notice the bracelets. “So you’re all matching now then?”

Simon stiffened next to him. 

Curtis patted his shoulder. “That’s cool, Simon,” he said.

He relaxed again and dug into his pocket. “There’s one for you,” he muttered. “If you want.” It didn’t feel fair to only make one for the girls, so he’d made one for all of them. He wasn’t sure how he’d expected Curtis to react. He seemed confused for a moment, but it wore off.

“Yeah?”

Simon pulled another bracelet out. This one was maroon and white, the colours of Curtis’ old running jersey. He was hoping that the colour scheme wouldn’t make him mad, or upset. Those were just the colours Simon associated with Curtis in his mind.

He looked down at it for a moment, before taking it from Simon. “You remembered,” he said, as if he hadn’t been one of the most promising runners in the country before the coke incident. 

Simon just shrugged in response. 

Curtis smiled, and then tied the bracelet securely to his wrist. “Thanks.”

He wasn’t sure what he was feeling. More overwhelmed than usual, and just a little bit happy. 

“The orange is for us,” Alisha said, showing Curtis the orange strand in her bracelet as well. “Like, we’re all connected.”

“Guess we are now,” he mused. 

***

It took Nathan longer than any of them thought to catch on. Considering he was the most self-absorbed of them all, they shouldn’t have been surprised, but he did seem to be someone who latched onto little details. It wasn’t until the end of the day, when they were all changing out of their jumpsuits that he noticed. He saw Kelly’s first.

“Hey! What’s that?” he asked, jumping across the room to grab onto her wrist. 

Kelly quickly twisted out of his grip. “None of ya business.”

He narrowly avoided her smacking him across the head again. “When did you get one?”

“I told ya. None of ya business.”

Then his eyes scanned the room, finding Alisha’s wrist as she ran her fingers through her hair, fixing it in the mirror for later that night. “You too?”

“You jealous?” she teased, with a shrug and a smile.

“I’m getting out of here,” Curtis said, throwing his bag over his shoulder and walking straight in front of Nathan. 

“Wait!” he called. “Why does everyone -”

“See you tomorrow!”

Nathan stopped in place, seemingly needing to process what was happening. Then he rounded on Simon. “You!” He bounced across the room, crowding Simon against his locker and ignoring how uncomfortable he looked as a result. “Why am _ I _not exclusive enough for your club?”

Simon had no idea what to do, and as the two girls yelled at Nathan to back off he found his hand sneaking towards his pocket. “I made one for you too,” he said, cutting off whatever the other boy was saying. 

Nathan drew back completely, and watched as Simon took a deep breath and held out a bracelet, purple and yellow twisted around orange. 

“I didn’t think you’d want it.”

He snatched it out of his hand, quickly tying it around his wrist. “Well, you were wrong.” He shook his wrist, making sure it wouldn’t fall off.

Simon smiled faintly, ducking his head as if that would hide it. 

“What are you smiling about, Barry? It’s just a bracelet.” Nathan regretted the words as soon as they left his lips, and Simon’s smile fell. He looked down at the colours wrapped around his arm and sighed. “I like it,” he muttered, allowing himself a moment of vulnerability for Simon’s benefit. At least, that’s what he told himself. This was for Simon. It definitely wasn’t because Nathan had started to find joy in the rare moments that Simon actually smiled. No, it had nothing to do with that at all.

Nathan felt a wave of relief as Simon smiled again, his eyes still pointed at the floor. He looked over and noticed Kelly with a raised eyebrow now. Shit, the mind reading thing. She definitely heard all of that. He shrugged in response, as if she wouldn’t know he was freaking out. At least Kelly was good at keeping secrets. Nathan reached out and shoved at Simon’s shoulder, already thinking of a joke to get himself out of this situation. 

***

“I think it would be nice,” Alisha was saying, as she and Kelly walked into the community center together the next morning. “We never do anything nice for him.”

“Nice for who?” Nathan asked, already wanting to know what the girls were planning.

They looked at each other, as if deciding whether he was worth telling or not.

“Oh, come on. You can’t keep things from me here. This is _ my _ community center so everything that happens here is _ our _business.”

Alisha rolled her eyes and sighed. She glanced around the room to check if the others had arrived yet. “We were thinking about making Simon a bracelet,” she said. 

“He’s already got one.”

“Not from uz,” Kelly explained.

“So?”

“So, we all have one and he doesn’t. It doesn’t seem fair.”

“If he wants one, he can make himself one.”

Alisha sighed and Kelly’s hand flinched at her side as if she’d stopped herself from hitting him again. “You’re not getting it,” she said. 

“Does Nathan ever get anything?” Curtis joked, making his way over to his locker. He glanced around the room. “Where’s Simon?”

The four of them stopped in their tracks. It wasn’t like him to be late. He was usually the first there every morning. A wave of relief fell over the room as Simon made his way in.

“Barry! We were so worried about you.” Nathan draped himself around Simon, who went incredibly still. 

“Why?”

“You’re late! We thought one of those maniacs got you. We thought they’d kidnapped you on your stern walk over and you were strung up by your bootstraps from the ceiling of some warehouse that I went to a rave in once.”

Simon’s eyes flicked around the room, uncomfortable with all the attention but not sure what to do about it. His eyes landed on Nathan’s wrist, on the bracelet that was still resting there and his hand moved as if he was about to hug Nathan back but decided against it. “Get off me,” he muttered.

The most surprising thing was Nathan actually listened. “What were we supposed to tell Sally?” he continued anyway. “That we had to abandon her for a noble cause? How could she have believed us?”

“Shut up, Nathan,” Curtis groaned, leaning his head against his locker as if he sometimes just wanted to bang it against the metal. 

Nathan turned to insult him quickly enough that he missed the small smile that passed across Simon’s face, but Kelly and Alisha definitely noticed it.

***

“So about this bracelet thing,” Nathan said, climbing onto the table to sit next to Kelly. “I think it might be my best idea ever.”

Kelly shoved him with her elbow as Alisha quickly checked to see that Simon wasn’t close enough to them to hear that. Fortunately, he was still making his way out of the community center with Curtis. “Shut it,” Kelly replied.

“Why?”

“Because it’s supposed to be a secret,” Alisha reminded.

His brow furrowed. “Didn’t you guys know that I’m shit at keeping secrets?”

***

Between the two of them, Alisha and Kelly figured out what they would need. They didn’t have a lot of money, but they had enough to buy one of those ‘make your own bracelet’ kits from the toy section of a department store. The ones that came with all the colourful string and a little book that told you what to do. Between the four of them surely they’d be able to figure it out. They could use the bracelets Simon made as a reference, something to show whether they were moving in the right direction. 

Alisha filled Curtis in the next day on the roof of the community centre while Kelly managed to distract Simon by having a genuine conversation with him, which seemed to leave him shocked. Curtis agreed to it without much thought and eventually the four of them were piled into Kelly’s tiny living room. There were different coloured string spread out across the coffee table as they sat around it. Nathan was hogging the instruction book, trying to read it but not quite making sense of what they needed to do. The first argument occurred when they realised that none of them had any idea what colours they should use. All they had to work with so far was the orange. 

“Well what colour matches orange?” Alisha asked, trying to be logical about this because no one else was. 

Curtis shrugged in response. Kelly had taken to staring intently down at the colours as if the right ones would reveal themselves.

Nathan dropped the book down on the table, which Alisha quickly snatched up to try and keep it away from him. “He picked up the stack of black string. “Let’s just do this,” he said.

“We can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Cause look at ours, they’re all colourful. We can’t just make him a black one.”

“Shouldn’t it be three colours anyway?” Curtis interjected. “Like ours.”

“So we’ll add white.”

“We could it use it to practice, yeah,” Kelly said. “Let Nathan make one so we don’t waste ‘em.”

Alisha looked at her for a moment. She couldn’t fault that it was a good idea. That way Nathan would be distracted enough that they could make an actual decision. “Alright,” she said, and reluctantly handed over the book again. 

Curtis looked down at his bracelet. “So he’s done colours that match us,” he said. “We should do the same.”

“What colours make you think of Simon?”

“Yellow,” Nathan answered.

Three pairs of eyes locked onto him. 

“Yellow?” Kelly asked.

He shrugged, but didn’t elaborate. 

“What about blue?” Curtis asked.

Kelly tapped the blue on her bracelet. 

“Like, a darker blue.” He reached over and picked up a strand of navy. 

Alisha nodded to herself. “That could work.”

They realised rather quickly that they were going for muted tones, the opposite of what Simon had made for them. Navy, grey, black and orange sat on one side of the table, everything bright was on the other.

“This isn’t working,” Nathan announced. He held up what was supposed to be the bracelet, but seemed to be just a collection of desperate knots. 

Kelly laughed. “Right, so you’re not doing it,” she said.

He frowned at her. “I’m making another one.”

“We’re not supposed to be wasting it,” Alisha reminded.

“There’s enough here for all of us.” Nathan’s hand hovered over the table. He picked up a yellow strand, then an orange. “I need pink.”

“Pink?” 

“I like pink.” His tone left no room for debate, and none of them were game enough to question him.

“Maybe we should all try making one and we’ll give Simon whichever one is best,” she suggested. 

“Alright,” Kelly agreed.

Curtis nodded, and the four of them set to work. 

They ended up all using different colours. Nathan stuck with his bright assortment, which he quickly made clear was not up for discussion. Alisha used navy and grey for hers. Kelly switched out the navy for red and used white as a buffer between that and the orange. Curtis used black and a dark green that was sort of forresty. He wasn’t sure if it clashed or not but he wasn’t sure how much that mattered. He thought it looked ok. 

With laser focus, the four of them worked through their bracelet, checking in with the book and occasionally each other to see that they were on the right track. By the time they finished it was way later than they thought it would be. Kelly got up and pulled a few beers from the fridge, shoving the string aside so it didn’t get ruined by the bottles. She flicked on the TV and they watched whatever stupid movie was on at this time. Nathan made a string of commentary, often clashing with Alisha with his loud opinions and occasionally butting heads with Curtis. Through everything Kelly couldn’t help but think that Simon should have been with them. Maybe this was something they could start doing as a group instead of always going out. She was getting a little tired of the bars in the area anyway. 

***

At some point in the night that Nathan was determined he had no recollection of, they decided that Alisha’s bracelet turned out to be the best, which mean that hers would go to Simon. They hadn’t decided when they were going to give it to him but Alisha couldn’t help but smile as the five of them changed into their jumpsuits the next morning. Even when they found out they had to spend the day picking up rubbish, she still couldn’t help but feel happy. That was until Nathan started trying to pinch Simon with his grabber and she and Kelly had to stop him and remind him that being a decent human being wasn’t the worst thing in the world. 

***

Simon was his usual level of quiet that day at lunch. The five of them all piled onto the picnic table outside the community center, staring out towards the lake. Nathan and Alisha were battling out who had to the weirdest empty cup related story, which was as strange as it sounds. It wasn’t until the two of them seemed to run out and when Alisha caught Kelly’s eye across the table that she remembered what they were supposed to be doing. She dropped down from the table to the bench next to Simon, smiling at him. He tensed up immediately, feeling the four pairs of his on him without looking up. 

“Hey, Simon,” she sing-sang, as if he hadn’t been sitting there the whole time. “We made something for you.”

He looked up at her, incredibly cautious. It was easy to tell that was out of his depth. 

Alisha pulled her bracelet out of her pocket and placed it down on the table in front of him.

Simon just looked down at it silently, not moving a muscle. 

“I still think mine was better,” Nathan announced. 

He hadn’t even had time to process the first bracelet. “You made one too?” he asked.

Nathan shrugged. “We all made one but Alisha rigged the group and decided hers was best.”

“We all made a decision,” Alisha retorted. 

“Well, I was drunk and I don’t remember it so you cheated.”

“You weren’t drunk? You’d had half a beer?”

“Do you still have it?” Simon cut in. 

Nathan looked at him for a moment, and then smiled brightly. “I saved everyones,” he said, before dropping the other three bracelets on the table with Alisha’s.

“Alisha’s came out the best,” Curtis explained. “That’s why we gave you hers.”

Simon stared down at the four bracelets for a moment. He was completely overwhelmed, struggling with what he was feeling. This was a lot. This was almost too much. He was going to burst. He reached out and picked up the four of them, and carefully weaved them together like a braid, making one big bracelet. “One from each of you,” he said, more to himself than to them. 

Nathan dropped down next to him, resting a hand against Simon’s shoulder, which he surprisingly didn’t flinch away from. “Now you can never miss us.” It was supposed to be teasing but it sort of came out genuine, and Nathan had to fight off the urge to cringe. 

He nodded, tying the bracelet around his wrist. He couldn’t quite look at them yet. “Thank you.”

“Does this mean we’re like a real superhero team?”

Alisha rolled her eyes at him. “Were we ever?”

***

As the five of them made their way back into the community center, Nathan running ahead and yelling about god knew what this time. Kelly fell back and walked next to Simon. 

“Wanna come over later? We’re all gonna watch shit telly or whatever.”

Part of him was trying to say that this was a joke. That she was just making fun of him the way everyone else had when they invited him places, but then he looked up at Kelly and saw that she was serious. “You don’t want me there,” he said, almost like a defense mechanism.

She shook her head. “Nah, wouldn’t be right without ya.”

They pushed through the doors and noticed that for some reason, Curtis had Nathan in a headlock and Alisha was screaming at them. Neither of them were willing to ask. Simon couldn’t stop the smile that came over him. “I’d like that,” he said.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm over at [stranger-awakening](https://www.stranger-awakening.tumblr.com) on Tumblr if you want to chat!  
Comments, kudos, etc. are appreciated.


End file.
